NeuroStim TMS Centers is one of the fastest growing TMS providers on the West coast and is now expanding to the East. While this case study precedes the formation of APAS, the 5.5 years spent with NeuroStim as the Director of Digital Marketing set the foundations for what would later become APAS Cloud. The final years were spent managing million dollar marketing budgets and optimizing every aspect of the patient acquisition system, which became incredibly sophisticated and effective. One of my greatest success stories. Read the full story below…
NeuroStim TMS Centers is the leading TMS provider in the Pacific Northwest with an incredible team of professionals. NeuroStim specializes in transcranial magnetic stimulation treatments for individuals who have struggled with depression for many years but have never found lasting relief.
I met Walt and Brandon (founders) through another agency, invigoMEDIA, where I worked as the Director of Digital Marketing and managed their account for the first couple of months. Both Walt and Brandon managed to get the first two treatment locations up and running without much advertising, but after having spoken to a marketing guru on a mental health conference, they quickly realized that there was a quicker way to getting a location busy with patients. This is how they got in touch with Bob Mangat, the owner of invigoMEDIA, where I worked at the time and took control over their advertising accounts.
During these first couple of months, we developed a “TMS quiz” for NeuroStim TMS, which proved to be incredible effective in generating social media leads. We were the first to come up with the idea of a TMS quiz back in early 2019, with other TMS organizations quickly following and copying our strategies. While others were busy copying our old strategies, we continued to iterate and develop new strategies, always staying one step ahead of the competition.
During my 5.5 years with NeuroStim TMS Centers, we did incredible things together as a team, and we learned a lot from always pushing the limits of what was ‘technically’ possible. I’ll go into more detail below…
When I joined NeuroStim in early 2019 on a part-time basis helping them with their advertising, they had two clinic locations in Lakewood and Bellevue, Washington. Not long after, NeuroStim opened their third treatment location in Olympia, WA.
During the first year, we had modest advertising budgets of around $10-15k per month. As NeuroStim opened more locations in the years that followed, I joined NeuroStim full-time as the Director of Digital Marketing towards the end of 2020 and the advertising budgets quickly ramped up. It didn’t take very long before we were hitting $100k months. During this scale-up period, we became increasingly strategic as we continuously tested new strategies and technologies, which at such volume generated significant insights. We were fortunate to make many mistakes along the way, and get smarter because of them.
As technology continued to evolve during the early 2020s, we were always quick to adopt the latest and best solutions that could potentially enhance our patient acquisition. Some solutions worked, many didn’t. We learned the most and derived the greatest value from the approaches that failed, which forced us to iterate and improve. Eventually, we built a comprehensive patient acquisition system that excelled both in generating inquiries for the various NeuroStim TMS locations and converting these inquiries into actual patients.
We built the entire system from front to back ourselves and invested millions of dollars in perfecting it. This infrastructure helped propel NeuroStim from 2 to 12 clinic locations, which ultimately led to their acquisition by ARC Health in March of 2023.
After NeuroStim was acquired by ARC Health, which had many other mental health providers in their portfolio, restructuring became inevitable, leading to my departure in June of 2024. My departure was obviously in good standing, and I continue to have a great relationship with the founders and the many colleagues turned friends.
As explained in more detail above, my contributions to NeuroStim were significant and helped propel the organization from just 2 locations to 12 thriving centers leading up to their acquisition by ARC Health. The impact of my work continues to resonate even after my departure – they’ve now expanded to 16 locations and are growing rapidly, still utilizing the core marketing infrastructure and patient acquisition system we meticulously built during my tenure. This consistent growth directly contributed to NeuroStim’s valuation during their acquisition by ARC Health.
The marketing ecosystem we developed wasn’t just effective – it proved to be sustainable, scalable, and adaptable to changing market locations and conditions. Our infrastructure seamlessly scaled from managing campaigns for 2 locations to orchestrating complex, geo-targeted strategies across 12 centers without requiring proportional increases in marketing staff. During my time with NeuroStim, we achieved a consistent cost per acquisition while maintaining high-quality TMS inquiries that converted at exceptional rates. The system’s intelligent budget allocation across channels continuously optimized toward actual patient starts rather than just inquiries, resulting in marketing efficiency that became a competitive advantage in the TMS industry.
This experience formed the foundation of what would later become APAS Cloud, as the principles of data-driven measurement, comprehensive server-side tracking systems, and integrated technology solutions that proved so successful at NeuroStim are now core to how we help other healthcare organizations achieve similar growth trajectories. We pioneered HIPAA-compliant data architectures that could unify marketing actions with clinical outcomes without compromising patient privacy – a capability that remains rare even today. The combination of technical expertise and healthcare-specific knowledge, including HIPAA-compliance, gained during these formative years continues to inform our approach to solving complex marketing and data challenges in specialized healthcare verticals. As Brandon Gary, co-founder of NeuroStim, noted, ‘Lez’s expertise was instrumental in propelling NeuroStim TMS Centers from 2 to 12 clinics, leading to NeuroStim’s acquisition.’
Lez’s expertise was instrumental in propelling NeuroStim TMS Centers from 2 to 12 clinics, leading to NeuroStim’s acquisition. Lez’s knowledge of digital advertising and technical marketing helped take our patient acquisition to the next level. His ability to resolve complex integration issues with ad platforms, our CRM, and EHR systems allowed NeuroStim to improve our lead generation efforts significantly. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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